


bury your dead

by yourestuckinmyhead



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bell works in a cemetery and Clarke likes to lurk there, Bellamy-centric, F/M, Necromancer!Bellamy, Seer!Clarke, and a bunch of old roman/greek sayings, they are sad angsty nerds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-06-23 11:10:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15605004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourestuckinmyhead/pseuds/yourestuckinmyhead
Summary: Bellamy can hear the dead.One day he finds Clarke sleeping on a grave.





	bury your dead

**Author's Note:**

> The problem with death is that people rarely deserve it.

 

_Agape_

 

He first sees her in the middle of the night, asleep on a newly filled grave. He stands over her, the beam of his flashlight illuminating her whole body, a short blonde girl with a face too peaceful for someone lying above the dead.

 

“Do I need to call the police?” He asks. The cemetery gets all kinds of weirdos who hang out near the famous dead they have buried--all kinds of fetishists and robbers and pseudo witches and homeless--this isn’t the first time a poor soul has used a grave as a bed.

 

He doesn’t get a response, but hears a rustle from some graves a few yards behind him and when he turns around again, she’s gone.

 

___________

 

Bellamy Blake can hear the dead.

 

They sound like a ghostly whisper of something not quite real, as if it is coming from a great distance away.

 

Sometimes they sound like something spoken in reverse then played forwards, the words curving and lifting in all the wrong places.

 

Sometimes the dead sound like a memory, like a certain shade of a color or a peculiar smell.

 

And one time the dead sounded like the broken notes of a song, the quiet ringing of a piano that stopped playing years ago--but Bellamy doesn’t like to think about that once. He doesn’t like to think about that particular melody at all.

 

He is haunted by the dead, all of them, all at once.

 

He works in a cemetery.

 

 _An odd choice,_ they whisper sing howell cry

 

But what would they be if they didn’t have someone to listen?

 

___________

 

The second time he sees her, she is wide awake. It’s the middle of a different night, and he is on his way to listen to the stories of Mr.Weddell. One moment, there is nothing in front of him, the next, there she is, staring down at a gravestone like she is willing it to combust.

 

“You again.” This time, she turns to look at him. Her eyes are blue and bright, and he realizes that she is both beautiful and older than she looked when she was sleeping.

 

“You look different, awake.” She goes back to staring at the grave in front of her.

 

He is not sure who said which part of the exchange, he’s not sure it matters.

 

(He’s not sure words were said at all.)

 

He walks a little closer so he can read the name written on the stone. In bold, block face letters is

 

_RAVEN REYES_

_\----_

_SPACEWALKER_

 

Bellamy waits and listens for anything she might have to say, but only hears the light breathing of the woman next to him.

 

“Do you know her?” A voice asks, and this time he’s sure it’s her, with a voice rough and breathy at the same time--like she is both screaming and whispering.

 

He turns back to look at her and says, “No.”

 

(This time he pays attention. This time he’s sure all of this isn’t just the night.)

 

She picks up a bag he doesn’t remember her having and starts to walk away, she laughs a bit but it’s hollow and sad and tells him “Oh, that’s too bad. You would really like her.”

  


___________

 

Bellamy remembers the first voice he ever heard, the one that drifted up through the floorboards and told him softly, carefully, that this was when his life was going to change, that this was the moment that divided his life into the before and the after.

 

_Stand_

_You_                       _Now_

 

_separate_

 

 _from_ _be_

_fore_

 

 _from_ _every_

_One_

_else_

 

He woke up to find his mother dead in her bed, Octavia crying about how she had seen their mother’s ghost, that she had mouthed the word _Goodbye._

 

___________

 

He dig graves.

 

But that’s just sometimes.

 

He also consults the dead. He can feel how the air is different over certain graves, knows when a certain patch of earth will reject a body, will detect the subtle rumblings of a soul left with unfinished plans.

 

Bellamy also learns a lot about history from the ghosts that have lingered for centuries.

 

He listens and waits and digs some graves.

 

Uninterrupted, alone, but surrounded by ghosts who whisper their company.

 

___________

 

One of his favorite ghosts is a young man named Jasper. Bellamy met him on his first day on this cemetery’s dead soil, and almost mistook Jasper for someone alive. He had a way of buzzing, of vibrating, so that he almost made the air around him recognize a shift, a touch--as if through pure energy he forced the world to recognize his existence.

 

Maybe that’s why Bellamy likes him, or maybe it’s because Jasper’s ghost likes to sing songs about his finite forever. He also likes to rig up explosions right next to his friend Monty and yell BOOM right when the sound is supposed to reach the ears of the living.

 

The things of the dead do not make sounds, only their voices carry.

 

___________

 

_Dôs moi pâ stô_

 

There is a funeral today, which means that Bellamy has to dig a grave.

 

It’s a small one.

 

The family decided on a burial under a willow, one of the spots Bellamy had optioned as a good choice.

 

“Enough light, solid ground thanks to the root system, and pleasant company.” He had gestured to another grave, about ten feet off. This belonged Charlotte, who had always wanted a friend her age. It was a good match.

 

Too bad they had to die to meet.

__________

 

Bellamy can bring back the dead.

 

But he won’t.

 

Octavia will never forgive him.

__________

 

“Why is it, that you are so in love with the dead?”

 

The woman is back.

 

“Who's to say I love them?”

 

“Me.”

 

“Well? What kind of credentials does that give you, being you?”

 

She huffs at him, at his smirk.

 

“Okay, Mr.Gravedigger. Is this not your own version of necrophilia, working alongside the dead?”

 

“Philia used to mean a kind of brotherly love, friendship, warriors in arms. So, I suppose it’s true. I feel like a compatriot of the dead. I live among them.”

 

“If we are talking original greek roots.”

 

“Aren’t we always?”

 

“What you are looking for is _amor mortuorum_.”

 

“Who says I’m looking?”

 

“Who says you’re not?”

__________

 

Bellamy is digging a new grave when he hears it. A song seeping up from the earth.

 

_I waited for something_

_...and something died._

_So I waited for nothing_

_...and nothing arrived._

 

“Jasper, what do you want.”

 

“How did you know it was me.”

 

Bellamy leans into his shovel and thinks about how to describe it, how he could just _feel_ and _know_ when there was a difference in the air, how he could listen the the ways this voice felt different from the other one, how sometimes it felt like a cold blanket had been draped over his chest and other times like the sun had broken through the clouds to shine onto his back.

 

Instead he says, “What other ghost would sing such a sappy song?”

 

__________

 

_amor est mihi infirmitas_

 

The next time he sees the woman, she is staring at an unmarked grave.

 

“Tell me what she’s saying.”

 

He doesn’t waste time being shocked, instead he closes his eyes and listens. The world is quiet for a moment, and then the unmistakable sound of breathe filters through the silence.

 

“Clarke.” The voice is clear and warm in a way that does not fit the dead. It has a softness that does not belong in a graveyard.

 

“Clarke.” He says but the tone is wrong, there is not enough warmth there, his voice does not curve around the ‘a’ like it is supposed to, it doesn’t sharpen at the ‘k’. It’s just wrong. So he also says, “but that’s not how she said it. She said it...better.”

 

The woman, who he assumes is Clarke, stares through him with her cold blue eyes. She laughs, and it echoes around him wonderfully, and he realizes that the ghost is laughing with her.

 

“I’m sure,” Clarke says, “she said it like a lover long dead.”

 

The ghost whispers, too close to his ear, “ain’t that a tragedy?”

 

...

 

 ~~The woman~~ Clarke stays that night.

 

Bellamy and her whisper into the early morning until just before the sunrise.

 

It’s at the light of dawn that she tells him about some commitment that drags her away and Bellamy realizes for the first time that maybe the dead aren’t the best company.

 

That maybe living among the dead isn’t a life at all.

 

__________

 

He goes about his days much as he had before. Digs new graves, lowers new caskets, talks to the freshly dead, and texts Octavia that yes, he has eaten.  

 

He never thought of his life as empty, before. But he also guesses that he has never thought of it as full.

It has, instead, been very much an existence.

 

He makes extra coffee and stores it in his thermos, packs two extra sandwiches--one vegetarian, one not--and a blanket.

 

Bellamy hasn’t seen her for a week.

 

But he is hopeful that he will see her tonight.

__________

 

_Amare est vivere_

 

She is waiting for him on a grave covered in soft grass. It’s one of the fresher ones, and he remembers the burial well.

 

The casket that was smaller than a casket should ever be.

 

“Clarke,” he calls out to her. Her eyes drift open, onto him and then to the basket he is holding in his left hand. She raises an eyebrow, and suddenly he feels foolish.

 

“A picnic?” her tone is skeptical, but not biting or cruel. Still, he knows that a blush has graces his cheeks, his ears are hot.

 

When he gets close to her, he places the basket on the ground and pulls out the blanket and the sandwiches and the coffee. Glaces at her when he’s done and extends a hand to her, inviting her to join him.

 

“I--” He starts. “I come out here every couple of days and keep the ghosts company. That’s what I was doing the first night I saw you, on that grave.”

 

She nods, reaches for one of the vegetarian sandwiches without having to ask, and answers the question he doesn’t ask.

 

“I can smell the death on that one,” she gestures to the other sandwich he packed for her.

 

It’s his turn to nod, taking the other veggie. He had spent ten minutes standing in front of the deli meats, trying to figure what to buy and trying not to think too hard about whatever ghost might come to haunt him.

 

They eat in silence for a while, both taking turns stealing from the thermos. When his sandwich is gone he leans back on the blanket, staring up at the sky, waiting for her to finish.

 

The click of a tupperware lid tells him to open is eyes, so he does, and she leans back and joins him on the ground.

 

“Are you dead?” He asks. He needs to know.

 

They are both still looking up at the sky, connecting the stars of the constellations.

 

“A long time ago all I wanted to do was die. Everyone I loved was dead, so I figured that it wouldn’t matter.”

 

“And?” He isn’t sure he’s breathing, because for some reason he needs her alive. In a way that shouldn’t matter to him, not this soon.

 

“So I bought a gun, kept it in my drawer and thought about using it every night for a week. And then--”

 

They are both breathing so heavily, so deeply and yet it is almost like there is no oxygen at all.

 

“I saw my Dad. I saw Wells, and Raven and Lexa and Madi and others. So many more, more than I could count. And they were all standing around me, and I cried. I sobbed. Because they were right there, and so was I. I couldn’t hear them, but it was enough. It was enough to see then near me and know that I wasn’t alone.”

 

She exhales, and it feels enormous. The weight of the world released.

 

“I’m not dead, Bellamy. Are you?”

 

He thinks on it, and says “No, I don’t think that I am.”

 

And so they lay there, together. She draws the ghosts he has come to know so well, and he tells her all of their stories.

 

It feels as close to being alive as he has ever been. They spend the rest of the night among their friends.

 

__________

_De Novo_

 

“I can bring people back.”

 

He says, it is his last confession to her.

 

It has been a burden, to hide it. But he had been thinking of Octavia’s face when he said no to her. When he told her that Lincoln was gone and was going to stay that way.

 

“Okay.” Is all Clarke says, like this is nothing.

 

“But I won’t”

 

“Okay.” She says, just as easily as before.

 

“You’re not going to ask me to--?”

 

Clarke, she stops washing the dishes. She leans against the counter and looks at him from over her shoulder.

 

And she tells him then, softly. “You said you won’t Bellamy. That means you won’t, and I know you have your reasons. And I trust those reasons.”

 

And then she turns around again, carrying on.

 

Bellamy walks to stand next to her, starts to dry the clean plates she passes to him, and he whispers back.

 

“I love you.” He whispers to her, plainly. Without breaking concentration on the plate before him.

 

Clarke, she leans his head up against his shoulder, and says it back.

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Look up the translations to the latin/ancient greek if you want--but you don't need to. If you already know what they say or if something is wrong with them, then I'm sorry and I blame wikipedia.
> 
> This has been sitting in my Docs for over a year, finally finished it up and am putting it out into the world for it to hurt me back. 
> 
> Either way, thank you for reading this odd sad story about Bellamy living among the dead. It is strangely close to my heart.
> 
> Please comment and kudos--they make my heart race so.


End file.
